Everything Stops
by Czar of the Geegaws
Summary: When he finally dies, he finds nothing but gray.


Black shards and tendrils of thick, dark smoke are coming off of him, but still...still he's trying to cling onto something that's really real. Something tangible like the cold stone beneath him, but intangible enough so that he knows that this non-existence of his is not ending. He needs to know that the boy standing away from him is not proud of what he's done -- is not proud that he has taken away what little reality and life he had, even if so said life was not complete. He needs to know that this boy has a heart.

But perhaps he's asking too much, this boy has not been given the honest-to-god truth. Just a biased and skewed version of events that makes them out to be some sort of wrongdoing party bent on doing nothing but ruining others' lives. This is not true. He knows it, as do the other remaining members. The boy, however, does not. What they want is to be whole; what they do not want is to take away the thing that makes existing people whole from those existing people. They only want their own heart -- not someone else's, but theirs.

He could go on but he's wasting the valuable seconds of non-existence he has left, which, he reckons, can't be more than five. Almost gone, he stares at the boy, gaze forgiving because he knows what it's like to be used. He knows exactly what it's like to be told a distorted version of the truth. So maybe that's why he almost wants to reach out and embrace the boy -- though this act is impossible, as the only part of him that has not faded away yet is his eyes -- and tell him that he'd done a good job.

And as the last bit of his non-being is simultaneously devoured and pulled apart by darkness he swears that he sees some unnamed emotion flicker in his eyes. It does not matter, though, because he's gone before he can pinpoint what it was and what it meant. His body, once held together by a shell's instinctive unwillingness to let go, has disappeared from non-existence and is collecting somewhere in the Inbetween. It can't be more than a few seconds before everything that made him nothing has once again joined together. Making him nothing once more. But he's not happy.

Perhaps he thought that he'd be better off with discontinuing the non-existence so that he did not even have that. It would have been better, he thinks, than sitting in the Inbetween with nothing to do but watch as Nobodies and Heartless of varying shapes and sizes materialize all around him. Though he notices that as they stagger forward, each Nobody and Heartless shifts and morphs into a person, as though they had never been anything else. And it is with increasing interest that he watches the two differing beings seek out their counterpart, hopeful looks on their faces.

Maybe, just maybe, his Heartless is here too. Maybe, with any luck, he can find him and they can finally be together and make him real. He knows that it's stupid to hope so much, the other, more serious members told him so. Told him that he was stupid for hoping like he did, but he always knew that they were secretly hoping for something, _anything_, too. It's anxiety and doubt that keep him from standing and looking for his Heartless, he needs to see what happens to the others first. He needs to know what happens more than anything.

Something is coiling deep inside his gut, nagging at him to stop worrying -- that it's not like him -- and just go _look_. But he can't, he _has to know_. He believes that he's lucky that the Organization was so bent on self-control, otherwise he would have given in to the collective knot of instinct a short while ago. Across from him, not too far away, a Nobody and its counterpart have found each other. For a moment, it seems as if nothing will happen, as if the two will pass by one another without a glance. Then something happens.

The two beings reach out to the other, slow and cautious and deliberate. Their fingertips barely brush before sickly white and suffocating black swirl together and ribbons of the color pull them together and remove them from the Inbetween forever. His breathing had hitched when they had been brought into each other, wrapped up in pretty contrast before disappearing altogether. He does not know where they went, but the instinct buried in his gut tells him that they're whole again. That _he'll_ be whole again if he can find his Heartless. He then decides that perhaps the instinct is right.

Time does not seem to matter in the Inbetween, as he is sure that he has been searching for days and maybe weeks. Desperate to know what begins (or ends, he adds) outside the Inbetween -- whether it a whole and complete life, or a whole and complete death -- he keeps looking, eyes flitting in every direction. Space, also, does not seem to matter in the Inbetween, for he's positive that there has been nothing but endless expanse of dim gray for a very, very long time. He almost misses the scenery of the world that he did not exist in.

It takes a long time -- or so he thinks, as anything like time or space is too viscous to really be of importance -- to find his Heartless. And when he does, he's not sure what to do. No, he _knows_ what to do, but he is not sure that he can _do_ it. Staring at the near identical being in front of him, he is not sure if this is the right thing. He is not sure that he wants to know what begins or ends outside the Inbetween. He would think he was scared, if that were not impossible.

The first slow movement towards whatever is beyond the sleepy gray around them is not his own, it is the movement of the being that holds his corrupted heart. It is also not him that brings his hand up to touch the other's, not really, it is the hopeful instinct that carried him forth before. Fingertips touch and black meets white. Something in his body is pulling at him and he stumbles forward. The Heartless stumbles, too. And in the few moments before they fall into each other, he does not care what he was told before. He _is_ afraid.

In his peripheral vision he can see the figures of other Nobodies and Heartless swim and blur with the gray. Then, as if this sight is too much for him, the swirled black and white hide the image from view. These colors, so different and so similar, are representative of his heart and soul. Or so he feels -- perhaps he does not feel this at all. He can feel his body being tugged forcefully into the other one. He's slipping and losing control. With a last and horribly bitter smile, he realizes that nothing begins outside the Inbetween. But that everything ends.

Somewhere outside the Inbetween, he takes in shuddering breath, and wakes up whole.

* * *

**A/N**: This was based off a theory I had...oh, I'd say aeons ago (technically back in August). The theory? Well, basically, I was trying to figure out what happened to Nobodies after they died, and since I'm such a romantic... This is the result. I don't really "believe" this anymore, now that I've had time to think about it.  
The POV was ambigious for a reason. Deal. 


End file.
